“By squads, advance!” It was day seven of our trip outward from the sun. I had kept the squads in my section training in the simulator non-stop, with breaks only for exercise and maintenance.
Our current simulation dealt with the infiltration of a Titan-based Rak’Lan installation. All three of my squads were in what the Marines termed a Mark IX Hard Suit, called the “Miz” for short. It was designed to stand up to the rigors of vacuum in deep space, the vast temperature differences between being in the shade and being in direct sunlight, and non oh-two atmospheres. It wasn’t practical as an armor solution due to its mass in anything approaching a one gee environment, but it served well for low gravity situations.
The landing boat had deposited us a kilometer away from the Rak’Lan base, which was currently being bombarded from orbit. Our orders were to go in, capture prisoners if possible, gather any intelligence, and then demolish the installation. Recall would be on the opposite side of the installation after the landing boat orbited Titan twice, which gave us nearly two hours.
Both of my squads commanded by what passed for “veteran” squad leaders advanced slowly through the cold, brown murk, relying on thermal imaging and light enhancement to advance. My section was in a V formation, the open end toward the installation, with myself and Thomas’ squad at the point. Our advance was a mix between skating and a lope, taking advantage of the low gravity and our relatively high mass to stay low to the ground.
Wind buffeted us as we closed on our target. I used the controls of my helmet to call up an overlay of the positions of my section. They were moving adroitly, despite the simulated weather conditions. The comm system was quiet save for the occasional sharp intake of breath.
“Sergeant, we have contact with enemy passive detection systems.” That was Bogdanovich, in command of the first squad. Although he was thoroughly Russian in his outlook, he was shaping up to be an excellent squad leader. “If the orbital bombardment didn’t take out their control center, they know we’re here.” The tightness of his voice allowed his faint accent to creep through, something that would no doubt earn him some kidding from his squad mates later.
“Affirmative, Boggy.” I never asked if he liked the nickname that he had been saddled with. Everyone called him that, so it was natural that I would pick up on it. “Disable if possible, destroy if you can’t.” A caret showed up on my helmet, outlining Bogdanovich’s suit beacon. He designated a ring of passive sensors spread around the edge of the Rak’Lan installation and passed that information to the section. A series of blue dots appeared in everyone’s helmet.
The other end of the V crawled forward cautiously. “Contact with sensor net, sir.” Miriam Jacobson had a soft voice, husky, but utterly without emotion. She was a Jewish girl from the slums of Haifa. While she might not have had experience fighting the Rak’Lan, her childhood history of fighting Palestinian street gangs lent her the air of a veteran that I found no where else in my section. I was glad she was my second squad leader. “Setting charges now,” she said.
“Roger that, Jacobson.” Standard procedure called for us to try and disable a sensor net for a wide swath around our target. Passive sensors, that is, sensors that relied on changes in the environment, were extremely hard to detect, and even more difficult to defeat.
“Sarge, I’m catching an energy spike in the sensor net.” That came from somewhere in second squad.
I used the chin controls in my helmet to display the energy levels of the area surrounding the station. “Section, fall back twenty meters and dig in. Move!” The Rak’Lan had never used booby traps before, but I wasn’t about to sacrifice part of my command on the notion that they wouldn’t use them.
I watched my display as the section fell back. There was a flash that was blinding even through the murk of Titan’s atmosphere. I crouched in place and pointlessly raised my arm over my helmet visor. The automatic polarization would have cut in long before I suffered damage to my eyes, but old habits die hard.
“Report,” I said over the general push.
“The net is down, sir.” I could see Jacobson moving cautiously forward with her squad. “Uh…the remains look suspiciously like small-yield plasma explosives. I think those bastards booby trapped their net.”
“Concur, sir.” Bogdanovich’s squad was moving back into position. “As near as I can tell, the entire net is down.”
“Alright, then. Thomas, give us a door.”
The third squad carried limited combat engineering tools, including door busting charges, a portable welder, and an emergency patch kit. “Yes, sir.” A PFC from his squad moved forward, picking his way carefully through the trench left behind by the detonation of the sensor net. Working quickly, he pulled a toothpaste-like tube out of an exterior pocket of his suit. He removed a tab from the base of it to bring the gel up to a temperature that would be malleable in our cold environment. He squirted it on the side of the station in a rectangle that was wide enough for three Marines standing abreast. From another pocket, he took out a detonator, stuck it in the gel, and retreated back to his squad.
“Blow it, Private.” I watched as the exterior wall slowly fell inward. There was a brief moment of fog as the much warmer air on the inside rushed outward. “Boggy, recon that hole. Jacobson and Thomas, perimeter security.”
Bogdanovich used a small fiber optic camera to sweep the hallway. “Remote quarter, Squad One fiber optic camera.” In the upper left corner of my helmet, I saw the viewpoint of the camera that Bogdanovich was threading into the corridor. The explosive decompression had left several Rak’Lan corpses, their large liquid eyes frozen open in mid-hemorrhage. Air tight doors sealed both ends of the corridor. The strange, red lighting combined with the brown hue of the outside to make everything look monochromatic.
“Looks clear, Sarge. Shall we?”
“By all means, Boggy. Good hunting.”
I could just make out the hand signals Bogdanovich was giving to his squad as they entered the hole, fanning out in both directions to cover the corridor. The view from the camera dissolved into my normal vision. Thomas and Jacobson gathered on either side of the hole, their backs against the wall of the station.
“Clear!” Bogdanovich said. One of his squad members deployed a sensor array in the floor of the corridor. After a moment of consultation, he gave thumbs up. “No electrical activity in the corridor. We’re clean.” The sensor packs were another innovation that was supposed to help us in the field. Even though the concept of a booby trap seemed foreign to the Rak’Lan, we made every effort to ensure the safety of our people, especially when penetrating one of their installations.
“Everyone in,” I ordered. “Thomas, seal the hole and let’s bring the pressure up in here.”
Two members of Thomas’ squad hurriedly applied a plastic and carbon fiber blanket to the hole with a valve and a pressure regulator in the middle of it, gluing it in place with a quick drying adhesive. After a few moments of fussing with it, they backed away. Thomas consulted a computer on his forearm, made a few keystrokes, then said “Bringing up the pressure, sir.” Air from the outside began to fill the room, a mixture of nitrogen and methane. The blanket over the hole began to balloon slightly as the pressure increased. I could feel the joints in my Miz tightening up. “Pressure equalization in thirty seconds.”
“Squad one, take the left door. Squad two, take the right door. Throw them open on my mark.”
A timer and a digital pressure gauge appeared in my helmet. “Three…two…one…mark!” As the pressure balanced, both of my squads threw open their doors to a hot reception. A hail of fire from our assault rifles lanced out in both directions. Soldiers in the rear tossed grenades over the heads of the comrades.
“Left door clear, no casualties!”
“Right door clear, one wounded!”
“Computer,” I said. “End simulation.”
My visor faded to black, so I pulled the immersion helmet off of my head. I was greeted by everyone else in the section doing the same, all of us dressed in a mockup of the Miz. “Nice work, people. Hit the showers and take the rest of the afternoon off.” This was the first time we’d run a simulation with no deaths. “In another few days you might actually be ready for combat.” There were a few groans as they began to strip out of the Miz and the motion-sensing coveralls, but I was beginning to be satisfied with their progress.
Bumble Bee training exercises?